November 29, 2011 At Work William Kennedy on ‘Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes’ By Elisabeth Donnelly Revolutionary times fuel William Kennedy’s newest book, Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, which follows the career of journalist Daniel Quinn. The novel’s first half takes place in 1957 Cuba, where Quinn gets writing advice from Ernest Hemingway (“Shun adverbs, strenuously”), falls in love with a gunrunner named Renata, and hikes through the jungle for the ultimate journalist’s prize—an interview with Fidel Castro. The second half finds Quinn, eleven years later, witnessing another kind of revolution, this one in his hometown of Albany after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, as the city hovers on the verge of race riots. The eighth novel in Kennedy’s Albany Cycle—which includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ironweed—Chango’s Beads has a cast of characters that will feel familiar to readers of the earlier books, characters united by jazz, corruption, heroics, journalism, politics, and the perpetual revolution of history. I talked with the eighty-three-year-old Kennedy at his home in Albany—a townhouse where Jack Diamond, gangster, bootlegger, and the subject of Kennedy’s second novel, Legs, was shot to death. Read More
November 28, 2011 Arts & Culture The Desert’s Daughters By Jenna Wortham From 'Nevada Rose.' Photograph by Marc McAndrews. Not long ago, I became obsessed with sex work. I spent hours poring over the autobiographies of peep-show workers. I grilled my friends who dabbled in fetish work about their jobs, and I spent more time that I’d like to admit in strip clubs and all-nude revues. The tantalizing intimacy of the performance was only part of the thrill; the real allure, the draw that sent me to club after club in San Francisco, Miami, New York, Amsterdam, and London, was the desire to understand what it is like to take off your clothes in front of strangers for money. I got a revealing peek into this world on a recent Friday, at an event for Nevada Rose: Inside the American Brothel, a book about that illicit alternate reality. Marc McAndrews, a photographer from Reading, Pennsylvania, spent five years in the desert documenting the secret—albeit, legal—world of the American brothel. He visited more thirty brothels in Nevada, often spending a week or more at each establishment, including the infamous Moonlite Bunny Ranch featured in the HBO documentary Cathouse, as well as smaller brothels scattered throughout the region, sporting names like Angel’s Ladies and Sue’s Fantasy Club. Read More
November 28, 2011 Arts & Culture The Unlikely Event By Avi Steinberg Because I do not want to die in the brawny arms of an industrial-kitchen-fixtures salesman from Tulsa—at least, not one I’ve only just met—I don’t much care for airline travel. During a recent trip from Salt Lake City, my Boeing 757 began to lurch and heave and make dreadful noises. At times we seemed to be in free fall. I caught the look on our veteran flight attendant’s face as she rushed by: it was genuine fear. During one particularly terrifying plunge, I felt the brawny fingers of that kitchen-fixtures salesman inching toward me, tugging at my sleeve. I needed an escape. I reached into the seat pocket in front of me. At 33,000 feet, and falling, we are presented with roughly the same options as on earth. First, we get the in-flight magazine’s glossy parade of petit bourgeois distraction. But, face it, when your plane is going down, what good is a recipe for a quick and easy hake with hazelnuts and capers? For those seeking something more directly relevant, there’s the Sartre-esque barf bag. But for those of us who occupy that metaphysical middle ground between the in-flight magazine and the barf bag, there’s the airline safety card. Read More
November 23, 2011 Bulletin The Smartest Gifts of the Season By The Paris Review This year The Paris Review has the perfect present for anyone you know—and that little something for yourself too! Beloved by writers and artists for more than a century, the iconic Moleskine notebook has paired up with The Paris Review for the ultimate stocking stuffer. Embossed with The Paris Review’s logo and featuring a Dorothy Parker quote from her 1956 interview, it’s already on the wish list of everyone at 62 White Street. Kaweco, one of the world’s oldest pen companies, created the Sport fountain pen in the 1920s for “ladies, officers and sportsmen,” but we use our special Paris Review Sport pen for grocery lists. It’s tiny and compact, but when uncapped, it’s the perfect length for writing. Takes a standard cartridge. We can’t stop awwwing over these adorable onesies, made of 100% cotton and printed with a hand-written Paris Review logo. For slightly older friends, choose from toddler and youth tees in a range of vibrant colors. Subscribe now, or give the gift of The Paris Review, to scoop up this season’s savviest goodies!
November 23, 2011 On Food Hale and Hearty By Robin Bellinger Among the many things for which I will give thanks this Thursday, foremost is the fact that I am not in charge of Thanksgiving dinner. Instead I’ll be helping my mother in her kitchen, as she helped me in mine last year. It isn’t that I dislike cooking, or even that I feed a real crowd; I cook every day, usually with pleasure, and we don’t pull many extra chairs up to the table for the holiday. But sometime after the second pie has been baked and the turkey is in the oven and half the vegetables are ready but there is still so much to make, and the table not even set, I just want to sneak away without finishing up. How great a disappointment I would have been to Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman who led the campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. When Hale was thirty-four and the year was 1822, her husband died, leaving her with five children. Did she allow despair to overcome her stout Yankee heart? Never! She supported her family with that reliable moneymaker, poesy, before publishing a best-selling novel, and eventually going on to become the editor of the most influential women’s magazine in America. Read More